Everyone wants their dignity respected and protected. We understand this concept intuitively. But what does dignity mean for law and human rights? In the UK, dignity is an emerging legal concept, an adjunct to human rights, which is used to protect people's humanity and identity. As such, it sits in the wider human rights landscape of the European convention on human rights (ECHR) brought into UK law through the Human Rights Act (HRA) 1998.

Dignity case law in the UK is limited, and the issues it has so far raised are only the tip of the iceberg, but lawyers are learning how to use the concept in court in an expanding range of situations. Defining human dignity in legal terms is notoriously difficult though, partly because it has only been used in human rights law since the end of the second world war. In response to the war's atrocities, the UN's universal declaration of rightsin 1948 provided that "all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights" under its article 1. Since then, human dignity has become a conceptual tool for rethinking human rights and democracy. Dignity is therefore tightly connected to humanity, freedom and equality. We are born with dignity and it is not a quality or status that one has to deserve or may lose. This commitment to dignity has been endorsed by the vast majority of codified constitutions – particularly those adopted after dictatorships – in continental Europe, which have placed it squarely at the heart of their democracy and at the top of their human rights provisions.

In the UK the difficulty in defining dignity also stems from the fact that it does not appear explicitly in the 1950 ECHR, and thus is also absent from the HRA. The European court of human rights, however, has acknowledged that protection of dignity and human freedom is "the very essence of the ECHR" and that protecting dignity is a matter of civilisation (SW v UK, 1995). Human dignity has therefore emerged as an entirely judge-made concept with an uncertain normative basis and definition, generally located somewhere between the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment (under article 3, ECHR) and the right to privacy (article 8, ECHR).

The legal definition of dignity is becoming clearer and stronger at the European level as demonstrated by the EU's charter of fundamental rights (attached to the Lisbon treaty, which came into force in December 2009). Although the charter was not adopted by the UK, English judges have started looking at it for guidance and inspiration in defining human dignity. The charter makes the protection of dignity an explicit commitment of the EU (article 1) and contains dignity's clearest textual definition in title 1, including the right to life (article 2), the right to physical and mental integrity (article 3), the prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (article 4), and the prohibition of slavery, forced labour and human trafficking (article 5).

These provisions offer a wide-ranging and inclusive definition of human dignity. For instance, the protection of "physical and mental integrity" is certain to cover a much wider range of situations than the extreme and – fortunately less frequent – instances of inhuman and degrading treatment and torture under article 3 ECHR, as currently protected in UK law under the HRA. Similarly, the obligation to protect dignity at work resulting from the combined articles 5 and 31 ("Every worker has the right to working conditions which respect his or her health, safety and dignity") extends much further than the extremely rare instances of forced labour or slavery and anti-harassment legislation. While dignity protects every human being equally and is an intrinsic quality from birth, the charter makes a special mention of elderly people, who are recognised "a right to lead a life in dignity and independence and to participate in social and cultural life" (article 25), a concern of an increasing number of people in the UK.

Protecting and defining dignity through human rights law is not always a straightforward business, especially because it often raises, in the words of the European court of human rights, a question of civilisation. Every breach of human dignity not only affects the individual victim, but also society as a whole, by raising the question of how we choose to live (and die) and relate to each other. It thereby calls into question the state's role in protecting our dignity. By the same token, any current and future legislation – of the kind the commission on a bill of rights will consider – that fails to acknowledge our unique and vulnerable humanity might breach the European standard of dignity. It would certainly damage the quality of our democracy.